comparison

Anne Lamott once said there were 3 types of prayer, ‘Thanks,’ ‘Help,’ and ‘Wow,’ and I think that’s pretty accurate, but it’s the ‘Help’ ones I’m thinking about today. Often, in the Scriptures, the writers are asking for guidance, for help through any number of situations or challenges or obstacles. Sometimes the help is to deliver them, to grant them peace, or a good night’s sleep, or to bash their enemies on rocks. Either way, the cool thing is that they always come to God with a beautiful humility, a sense of their place and of His place. They have a problem and He can fix it. He was big, strong, awesome enough to fix anything they could carry, and He was loving enough to want to. (Whether He did or did not is another matter, a question for another day.) But, perhaps more importantly, they believed that they were big enough, significant enough to Him that He would care about their problems, obstacles, their well-being enough to come to their rescue and provide what they needed.

The interesting thing that has happened, as we get more religious and less childlike is that that innocent humility is gone, replaced with the modern idol of comparison.

Where we would immediately go straight to God and say/scream “HELP!!!” now we wonder if our problem is enough to warrant an audience with the Creator of the Universe. There are others with so many more pressing issues, catastrophes, global disasters, matters of life and death. We say, “well, it’s not as bad as ____, and we should just get over it.” This lie grows in our heads, whispers that our trouble is inconsequential, selfish, and we should be ashamed to even consider bothering Him with it.

This is a bizarre kind of idolatry, where we are the focus instead of the character of God.

As the humility goes, the honesty goes, too. And we hide our hearts under carefully crafted masks of what we think we should be.

Could you even imagine speaking of revenge before God, saying,“Happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks,” as the prophet Jeremiah did in Psalm 137?

I’m not saying you should feel that way, but what if you do?

Well, I would probably pretend not to, because it’s not very spiritual and what would everyone else think? I would probably paint a smile on your face and hide those feelings in a corner somewhere until they disappear – they will disappear, right?

More masks, more idolatry, more destructive circles, more unhealthy behaviors, more resentment, more bitterness, more fake plastic people.

There are 2 words in the Bible that explode this whole warped system of ours. In John 11, a man named Lazarus dies and Jesus is late and if He “had been here,” Lazarus “would not have died.” The story has a very happy ending, but before Jesus does exactly what He came to do, what He knew He was going to do all along, verse 35 says, “Jesus wept.”

He didn’t say calm down, don’t cry, just wait, watch this. He didn’t try to cheer anyone up, didn’t minimize their pain (and consequently, His own). He didn’t tell anyone what they should be feeling or where to direct their heartbreak. He wept. He wasn’t concerned with comparison or comfortability. He was interested in the hearts of these 2 sisters, in their honest, authentic, wide-open hearts, without pretense or the self-imposed weight of “the should’s.”

The truth of the Bible (and of human experience) is that no one heals by covering brokenness with denial. It is only through dragging it into the light, weeping over it, laying it down and leaving it there, at His feet. Sure, our wound may not be as deep as someone else’s, our diagnosis not as severe, but comparison has never been His concern. His concern has always been our hearts, and He heals paper cuts as well as fractures, if we only trust Him enough to stop pretending and ask.